


Black Sheep

by CurlicueCal



Series: Packstuck AU [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Demons, Demonstuck, F/M, Fantasy AU, Psychic Wolves, Soul-Bonding, also very wolf-y, and Karkat probably deserved this, but I figure I'll wait til I actually get them all on the same page to tag that ship, demon!karkat, endgame is davejadekat, extra feathery dave, in which Kankri is the bossiest wolf to ever wolf, jade's not a wolf she just borrowed one, there's just a lot of wolves y'all, wolf!kankri, wolf!slick
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-05-19 11:44:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 12,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5966191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CurlicueCal/pseuds/CurlicueCal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Easy,” she says again, like you might spook, voice going slow and soft.  “...Can you understand me?”</p><p>“I don’t know.  Can you talk like you’re not lecturing a wiggler?”</p><p><i>--No fighting!--</i> Kankri tells you, even as her eyebrows wing up.</p><p>----</p><p>Karkat meets his first human.  Jade meets her not-first demon.</p><p>Surprisingly, everyone survives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is intended to be read after "[Stray Dogs](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1183518)" and will probably make more sense that way.  
> This is also the first part to the actual plot of this 'verse.  
> Thanks to rollerskatinglizard for beta.
> 
> c/n: some acephobic language

“How the fuck did I wind up with the defective wolf?” you grumble, wondering aloud to the empty forest around you.

Not quite empty enough.

Kankri’s ears prick back at you, and your wolf-brother either reads your tone or recognizes enough keywords to extrapolate successfully from experience.  -- _ That is very inappropriate/unkind/rude.--   _ The grey wolf demon’s mental rebuke is overlaid with the strong impression of a snout sniffing uninvited at hindquarters.

You cross your arms, kicking a chunk of sod out of the forest floor.   _ \--I notice you didn’t say untrue,--  _ you shoot at him on a dagger-sharp thought.

The barb earns you a wave of disapproval, pressed onto your mind like the sharp, cool scent of pine, the scratch of needles in fur.  Your wolf-brother doesn’t even bother to glance back at you.  Built small and agile—ha—runt of the litter more like—he pads ahead through the trees, picking up each foot carefully.  The dappled light picks out the hint of fox-red striping on a coat that is otherwise an unexceptional, unrelieved grey;  rusty mirrored lines running from browbone to ear and back along his flanks.  He’s slightly too stocky to be described as dainty but you’d never know it from the way he acts.

_ \--You are a challenging troll-brother,--  _ Kankri declares, his tail flagged primly,  his eyes a serenely unflustered gold-in-black.  _ \--You require a differently-skilled wolf.-- _

_ \--/(keeper/teacher/trail-finder),--  _ the last thought echoes. -- _ ((woolbeast-herder.)) _ \--

You grit your teeth and yank at your hair.  Your ears, far less agile than his, twitch.  “What I  _ need _ ,” you growl, switching back to spoken words on the off-chance that this will short circuit a lecture, “is not to have my life falling into shambles around me.”

\-- _ Scent-crossed trails/slipping stones/little broken branches and twigs in the den.  That is a useful mouth-noise,--  _ Kankri muses.  His thoughts have a distinctly self-satisfied tinge, the smothering scent of thick smoke.  -- _ I know many words.-- _

_ “Great _ .”  You throw your arms up, waving dramatic circles in the air.  “Thank you so fucking much for that epically ungermane conversational tangent, Kankri, that was extremely insightful. I am just rapturous with delight that my misery can provide fodder for your vocabulary-fetish; I could shit myself with pleasure on the spot.  And by the way, do you actually have some goal in mind for where we are going right now or am I just following you because I am too stupid to have any better plans?”

_ \--You are running with no scent ahead of you and no prey to hunt,--  _ Kankri thought-pictures at you.  This is pretty much his way of saying yes, indeedy, you are an idiot.  It’s you.   _ \--I will pick the good/right/best way until you are ready to go back.--   _

Right.  Back.  Because rejoining your little scouting party-for-three isn’t going to be hideously awkward after your epically obvious flight.

On the other hand if you wait long enough that Sollux or Terezi and their wolf-sibs get worried and come looking for you it could be downright mortifying.

Dreamwalking alpha of alphas, but you’re a stupid, ungrateful bastard.  You should still be over the moon that you even  _ have _ a pack, somehow, miraculously, and instead you’re off sulking because your romantic inclinations got thwarted by a suppository-dose of reality.

Like it wasn’t really, really obvious that Mituna and Latula had been circling each other for a flushed quadrant for perigees now.  And, okay, it was harder to picture Sollux and Terezi flushed than it was for their wolves, but pitch, yeah, pitch could work.  Sollux had his other concupiscent quadrant in counterpoint to his wolf-brother’s, heart-to-spade, so a spade-to-heart would be ideal, even, make it a set, ha, that ought to turn the pointy little shitbrain’s gears.

(You hadn’t really thought—but with the way they moved wide around each other with an electric awareness of the other’s presence, the way they traded clever little verbal barbs like lovebites—yeah, you could see that amping into something blacker.)

You’d been so sure Kankri was developing an interest in Latula, too.  

_ \--Trail-chaser is a very good hunter,--  _ Kankri thinks approvingly, with absolutely no sign of your own emotional turmoil.  -- _ She scents/sees/stalks with no nose.-- _

Resentfully, you let a wave of the broody self-pity excrement-festival that is your brain lap out over him.  You figure it’s at least partially his fault you’re feeling it.  Everyone knows that wolf-quadrants are the most serendipitous.  The wolves fall in with their troll-siblings in the conciliatory quadrants, and all the best, most fated and romantic matches happen when the trolls follow their wolf-sibs in the concupiscent quadrants.

It is completely unfair that you have the only wolf you’ve ever heard of that has demonstrated no inclination toward concupiscent activities whatsoever.

Kankri doesn’t so much as twitch an ear as he thins the mental link between you.  The remaining touch where his mind hooks into yours is pure, disinterested dismissal.  -- _ If you want to mount someone so much then find a mate on your own.-- _

...And that’s you put in your place.  You should really know better than to tangle with Kankri on the topic by now.  As if your wolf-brother could be described as tractable in any circumstance.  It’s right there in his name: the scent of metal like cooling blood, the bitter tang on the back of your tongue, the iron bones of the earth, unbending.

Guiltily, you squelch the perpetual, niggling worry that bonding a freak mutant troll has in some way damaged him, that your weird off-caste blood could have tainted him, changed him, even as the color stained his eyes.  That you were never meant to have a brother-in-soul at all.

No one,  _ no one _ , questions a wolf demon’s choice in sibling.  Plenty of people were  _ appalled  _ when a tiny bundle of fur plowed right through a crowd of more suitable candidates and declared you  _ his _ .  Plenty of people still prefer to pretend you don’t exist.  But no one, then or since, ever breathed a word of challenge.

Besides, if Kankri catches the direction of your thoughts you’ll wind up cornered and mentally blasted with his own thoughts on the matter until next dawnbreak.  He’s the only wolf you’ve ever known that  _ lectures _ . And he’s not afraid to nip your shins until you bleed to ensure you pay attention. It’s impossible to envision Kankri being anything but what he wants to be—and you take comfort from that.  Patronizing, stick-in-the-mudpit migraine on four legs that he is.

\-- _ I heard/felt that _ .--

\-- _ Eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves.-- _

_ \--A *very* challenging troll-brother,--  _ he thinks, again, and the thought echoes with images of bumbling, still-blind puppies and an unflattering odor that you think might charitably translate to ‘dumb as shit’. _  --I must be a very talented wolf. _ \--

As you both settle in to expand upon this favored exchange of mental barbs, you turn the remaining portion of your attention back to the forest around you.  The trees look spindly-strange to your deepwoods-reared eyes, nothing like the behemoths rising up into the canopy that you’re used to.  A good number of these you could even fit your arms around.  

As a new pack with barely a dozen member-pairs and a young queen and alpha to boot, you knew you’d get pushed to the worst territory, far past the fringes of established packs.  You’re too small a group to challenge for something better, so you’re left to seek territory farther and farther from the home ground, out in the shallows of the woods, skirting the sealed lands and human civilization alike.  It’s ground full of lesser demons and barely formed elementals, the dregs pushed as ever to the edges.  It makes for a strange sort of tradeoff, in your opinion: the last dryad you spotted hadn’t even had fangs, but half the demons are too dumb not to try to eat you.  Exactly as fun as you might have expected.

Still, you hadn’t realized just how alien the land would feel—all the plants wrong, the light unfiltered, the air strange and sparse in your nose. 

Fuck, just two days ago your little three-pair scouting group had run right into some human’s bleatbeast herd, sending the dumb beasts panicking through the trees and probably giving the humans more scary demon stories to tell.  You’ve never even  _ seen  _ a human before, and now you’re dodging their livestock and villages and worrying someone’s going to set a hunter on you.

Made for a good meal, anyway.

The thinness of the trees here suggests you’ve wandered closer to the forest shore than you’d meant to.  The Captor-brothers and Pyrope-sisters are far enough to mute thoughts and emotions (thankfully), but still close enough that you can comfortably pinpoint their location through the packbond, some hours north and deeper to forest.  

The rest of your packmates are blurred to indistinction by distance.  You can’t tell exactly where they are, but the bright, possessive pull of the Piexes-sisters on your mind declares the direction of the main group.  The second scouting party feels fainter through the pack-bond, despite being closer, but there’s the (ugh) Serket-sisters to anchor the connection.  Mother wolf, but Feferi’s queen-sister has weird taste in quadrants.  Seen from that light, you should count your blessings.

Past time to stop indulging your own self-absorbed awfulness and head back.  

Back to camp and the none-too-subtle psychic broadcasts of two very horny wolves, filling the air with their blissful satisfaction with each other.  Back to the awareness that if Terezi and Sollux hadn’t yet devolved to tangling on the ground, clawing their way through each other’s pants it’s only out of some misplaced sense of pity for your sorry lonely ass.  Boy, does that sound fun enough to shit yourself over.

...Maybe they’ll be done?

_ bluh. _

_ Maybe _ you’ll go find a swamp to crawl into.

_ \--You would become muddy/smelly/easy-to-track,--  _ Kankri puts in, radiating distaste like the scent of bitter herbs.   _ \--I will find you a lake.-- _

\-- _ Your sensitivity,--  _ you tell him, -- _ is what carries me through from night to night.  Truly, I am warmed right down to the throbbing cockles of my spleen. _ \--

\-- _ Big lake _ ,-- Kankri returns, agreeably.  _  --Cold/wet/deep.-- _

You charge up the slope after him, determined to introduce some dirt and sticks into that fluffy grey coat of his. As you crest a small rise, the wind shifts, carrying a fresh set of scents through the trees.

Kankri breaks his flight, tumbling haunches-over-ears.  He rises from the leaf litter to face the new tailwind.  You turn with him as his mind thrums tension through your limbs, suddenly alert and wary.  The velvet of your back and arms bristles.  

\-- _ Stranger/Not-pack.-- _  Kankri’s thoughts curl in puzzlement, interest, alarm.  -- _ (Demon.) _ \--

You’ve caught the scent yourself now, half through your own nose, weakly, and more distinctly through his.  “Wolf.”  Your eyes scan the trees.  _ \--Oh, great.  We’re going to get hazed out of someone’s territory.  I thought you were paying attention.-- _

Kankri broadcasts deep offense like a swampy fog.   _ \--This is not territory/claimed-place.  There were no marks. _ \--  A brief lemon scent of uncertainty enters his thoughts, quickly transmuted to reproach.   _ \--Your yapping was very distracting. _ \--

In the broken shadows below you catch just the flicker of movement, of some bright color, your unseen stalker weaving another pass closer, approaching by guarded phases.  You remain still, crouched for fight or flight, not yet baring fang or sickle.  Still just the one scent.  Maybe your luck is in and you’ve stumbled across some rare pair of loners rather than a newly-denned pack or competing ground-seekers.

You try a broad mental call to any troll-kin in the vicinity, a quick, conciliatory, ‘ _ hi, let’s not fight _ ’.  Psychic linking to strangers has never been your strong suit and you can’t tell if any of your message is received.  It’s probably just as well—you are almost certain your undertone of  _ ‘because I will kick all your faces in, come try me _ ’ slipped through.

The shadows ripple and your observer moves to stand just in the open, legs braced wide, ears tilted slightly back in caution or suspicion.  The black wolf demon observes you intently through narrowed eyes.  He’s younger than you expected, full grown and good few handspans taller than Kankri, but still with that rangy quality that means he hasn’t finished filling muscle into his adult frame.  There’s a scrap of some bright colored fabric fastened loose around his ruff—something to make him more visible to non-pack?—and one of the gold eyes watching you is marked above and below with the stark white scarring of old injury.

He stares direct enough to be a challenge.  You stare back.  Silence stretches while you all stare at each other, tense and uncertain.  It begins to feel absurd after the first few long moments.

Okay, maybe you are going to have to make the first move.

_ \--Do not fight with the not-pack wolf,--  _ Kankri tells you, firmly.

_ \--I don’t actually run around looking for fights with everyone I meet, you know.-- _

The extremely dubious smell of meat aged just too long presses into your mind.  You nobly refrain from reaching over to thwack your wolf-brother.  It would set the wrong tone.

Instead, you reach out for the stranger-wolf’s mind, trying to find a balance to your thoughts that’s non-confrontational without rolling over and showing your belly. A balance you are more than capable of, thanks ever so much, Kankri.  

You settle for truth.   _ \--I don’t know what you want, but it would be an extremely pointless time-waste to fight with you and this ground is too crowded to be worth scrapping over anyway.  Thin trees, shitty hunting, swarms of lesser demons, and it’s more riddled  through with humans than sores on an infected backside.  Our pack will be moving on soon.  So will you, if you’ve a tenth measure of the sense the empress gave you.-- _

The black wolf blinks twice.  

Kankri huffs and scours your mind with the scent of pine needles.   _ \--I said no fighting!-- _

_ \--Excuse you, you wolf-sized fur clot, but that was a demons-damned *masterpiece* of politeness.  It could be bronzed and set out as a teaching display for the newly pupated.  ‘How to win hatefriends and influence people, a schoolfeed in choking down your never-ending fury at the stupidity of others so you can bleed out of your spongy internal bits slightly less often.’  Lovingly upchucked by Karkat motherfucking Vantas, diplomat extraordinaire.-- _

Kankri lays his ears back, huffing again.

_ \--Ha! Now who’s being undiplomatic? _ \--

Across from you, the black wolf demon takes in the entire exchange with his head tilted slightly.  You don’t know what to make of that continued silent attention.  

Breaking the stand-off, he pads toward you.  His body language is less cautious now, ears pricked up with interest, but he still angles back and forth in his approach in a way that’s a bit unsettling.  Not chatty, this fellow.

You reach out toward the stranger wolf’s mind again, trying to get a sense of his surface emotions, at least.  His presence is there, seething and staticy, like getting the jumbled pieces of a puzzle tossed at your feet to make sense of.  Wolves rarely trouble to pare their communications down specific word-shapes and there’s an art and a flavor to translating from the scents/feelings/images as conveyed.  This feels more disconnected and formless even than that.  It’s… untuned, none of the conflicting bits or stray tangents filtered or ordered for presentation at all.  You might as well be receiving the raw contents of his mind, shouted at you.  

It strikes you for the first time to wonder if he’s even  _ bonded _ .  Well, not  _ un _ bonded, not this far from the homeground, but what if there’s a  _ reason  _ you’ve only encountered one presence?  Widow-wolves can be strange, when they survive their troll-sibs at all.

_ \--Are you... alone?--  _ you ask, as carefully as you know how.

_ \--((yes))--  _ thinks that mind, falling grey ash smell, even as a larger part blazes back  _ \--(( /NO))--  _ and you are hit with a tumult of always, always being alone (alone together), better safer apart, stay away, stay safe away --( _ together)-- _ , and hate and fear and resentment and distrust and, threaded through it all, a dark, cynical amusement.

You take a moment to try to untangle the bundle of thought and emotion you’ve been handed.

Beside you, Kankri has slowly tightened like a spring, his ears fixed forward almost aggressively, his mind honed down to a single sharp point of attention.  You wait, expecting the onslaught of correction or interrogation to burst forth, but he holds his thoughts unshared. 

Not a widow-wolf, anyway, but—something still strange.  Did something happen to him and his troll-sib?  Did something set them apart from the rest of your kin?  The tumult of his thoughts echo in your head.  Alone, yes, you know that kind of isolation, that bitter hunger.  You stomp down on a seedling of emotion that wants to grow into sympathy.  It has not been your experience that such sentiments are likely to be welcomed from you, of all trolls.

Still.  You straighten from your wary crouch, keeping your hands carefully away from your weapons, palms open.  Maybe you’ll be rebuffed, but.  You stretch out one hand before you.  With measured steps you approach the strange wolf.  

He watches you come, demon gold eyes unblinking.  A green-tinged glint of caste-color catches at the edges of them.

_ \--We don’t mean to be your enemies _ .--

_ \--((hostility/suspicion/amusement))--   _ His eyes eyes flick to your offered hand, back to you.  

You take another step.

The lunge comes all in one movement, not even a flare of aggression in his mind against yours to warn you.  You fall back, sickle drawn, hand clutched to your chest.  Kankri’s at your side in a flash, pressing in warm to your hip, hackles raised and whole body vibrating with uncertainity.   _ \--Fight/run/don’t-fight/run/stay/run?-- _

Your freakish blood makes bright smears of red on your hand and shirt as you try to press the new punctures on your palm closed.

The black wolf sits back on his haunches, watching you, head tilted slightly to the side again.   The scrap of fabric at his neck stands out sharp against his fur, like a bloodstain to match yours.  His mind still projects that steady blend of suspicious curiosity, undirected rancor, and sardonic amusement.   Amusement dominates.

“No,” you tell Kankri, eyes still studying the black wolf. _\--No, it’s fine, I don’t think he really meant it.  Well, obviously he meant it, but.--_ You juggle your sickle and and the straps of your pack, trying  to fish out a bandage to wrap your hand in without bleeding all over everything. _\--I think this is just… his way of saying hello?--_

Kankri’s wave of nostril-scorching disapproval encompasses both of you.  

The black wolf snorts. 

You give up and put your sickle away again, side-eyeing your bitey new hatefriend in case he decides to try for another chunk of you.  You wind the strip of cloth in tight rotations until the unfortunate color of your blood stops showing through.  You consider your options.

\-- _ You are extremely frustrating _ ,-- Kankri tells you as you take a bold—or, more accurately, stubborn—step back towards the scar-eyed wolf.  The rebuke rings in your mind with the sense of fur-pulling, random snatches all over, even where your velvet is far too short. You shrug him off.

_ \--I think we’re getting on great.  Practically besties already.  Why, would *you* rather go make friends?-- _

You’re surprised when Kankri actually moves to hang close to your heel, head low, tense and nervy.   _ \--He does not know the correct way to go. (foolish/hard-head/bleatbeasts) ((both))--   _ Disapproval still veins his thoughts, but it’s crystallizing sticky-stubborn, like pine sap.  _ \--I will help _ .--

You approach the black wolf together.  

_ \--If you bite me again,--  _ you tell him,  _ \--I am going to bite you back harder _ .--

The black wolf flashes his teeth lazily.  His spine stretches as he stands to meet you. His mind is equally a tangle of mixed signals: acid and amusement and challenge.  _  --((might))-- _

You decide to stop at a comfortable middle ground.

From this distance, you can see the secondary color showing vividly in gleaming green slivers at the edges of his golden eyes—not the brighter glow of strong emotion or the complete haze over of a true wolf-rage, but distinct enough to suggest he’s closer to agitation than the rest of his posture would let on.  In fact, other than that glint of acid green, he appears almost pleased with you both.  Still not friendly, but intrigued. 

Your brow furrows.  The color’s strange, actually, lime shading into a more sickly electric hue than you’ve seen from other bonds to that hemocaste.  You’re returning stares too directly again, but dawning speculation clutches in your chest, like a hand.   Could there be some other wolf-bonded blood-freak mutant you’ve not heard of? Maybe one that’s managed more hemo-nonymity than yourself?  And if there is...

You don’t get time to process exactly what the ramifications of that conclusion would be.

The black wolf glances to the side, mind flickering a hazy message of recognition, and then you can hear something approaching rapidly through trees and brush.

“Sorry, sorry, he’s with me!” a voice calls. “Don’t touch him, please; he’s mean. Slick, what have I told you about cornering—”

The figure breaks into view.

You fall back, snarling.

_ \--Human! _ \-- Kankri says and then teeters between flight or moving to help the other wolf flank her, scattering the targets you make.

The human, for her part, halts abruptly, her green eyes wide, one hand with a musket in it still out for balance.

She’s midblood tall, dressed in sturdy, forest-camouflaged clothes, alien in cut and style, but not so very different to your own in function.  The long, messy black hair is about the only other thing at all familiar to your eyes.  Her skin is sand brown, bare and unvelveted.  Eyes human-colorful behind the clear round lenses of her glasses, with white, not black or caste-color, around them.  Hornless, clawless, ears small and rounded, two square blunt teeth showing prominently where she’s pressed them into her lower lip.

You get the impression she’s studying you with equal fascination and that’s… disconcerting.

...She smells like broken leaves and earth and the heavy, organic scent of living things, slightly muskier than any troll. If she came closer, you wonder if you could catch the bite of iron in her blood.

\-- _ She smells wrong/strange/not-wrong, _ \-- Kankri murmurs, puzzled and uneasy, wind through fur.

The human turns those strange, bright eyes between you, from you, to your wolf-brother, to the black, scar-eyed wolf.  “Okay.  When you said you found  _ people _ …”  She gestures fractionally with her musket hand.  

You start, snarl picking up again.

She goes very still.  Moving slowly, the human opens her free hand, turning it out, placating.  She tilts the gun barrel further to one side.  “No, sorry, easy.”

Your eyes narrow.

“Easy,” she says again, like you might spook, voice going slow and soft.  “...Can you understand me?”

“I don’t know.  Can you talk like you’re not lecturing a wiggler?”

_ \--No fighting!-- _ Kankri tells you, even as her eyebrows wing up.

You resist the urge to send your wolf-brother a dirty look, but only because you don’t want to take your eyes off the human with the demons-damned  _ gun _ .  Trolls are faster than humans.  You  _ think _ you could cover the distance between you before she could get a shot off.  Maybe.  You’d rather fade back into the trees but the cover’s so damn patchy here in the forest shallows… you shift your grip on your sickle and test the give of the earth under the pads of your feet.

“...What’s a wiggler?” the human asks.  Your rancor doesn’t seem to have landed.  Maybe _ she’s  _ the slow one. 

“The dreaming mother’s mewling crotchfruit.  The organic embodiment of pointlessness as shat into the world by forces either beneficent or having a marvelous laugh at us all.  The entirely irrelevant distraction which I do not understand why I am explaining at this moment—does any of this help?”

“It’s a baby?  Or a puppy?”

“What the fuck is a baby,” you say, and manage to flatten out the question before you reach the end of the sentence.  “No, don’t tell me; I forgot you’re a mammal.  You brood your own larva.  I don’t want to hear anything about your horrific gut parasites; you just shut your gapehole right there.  I don’t care if you have a whole  _ litter _ chewing their way out of your stomach right now.”

This stymies her.  Or maybe it’s the way you’re gesturing furiously with your sickle.

Kankri nudges at your mind, frustrated and fearful and rabidly curious, trying to pry further translations from your brain.   _ \--Why are you talking about breeding?-- _

The black wolf demon sits back on his haunches and yawns, a mocking flash of fangs.

_ \--You should not breed with the human,--  _ Kankri adds.  _ \--She has a gun.-- _

_ \--Merciful fuck, please shut *up* about breeding.-- _

“Okay,” the human in question says after a tense silence. “That is definitely not how any kind of babies work.  I sure hope.”

You explode into a growl, curling your lips back to show her all your teeth.  “Great!  Thank you.  I think we’ve all enjoyed this lovely cross-cultural exchange of reproductive biology schoolfeeding.  Do you have any other invasive personal questions you’d like to cover, or can we skip to the part where you attempt to shoot the scary demons or run yelping for your human pack?

That hint of—openness, of curiosity falls away from her, leaving something serious and professional in its place.  Something that assesses you with frank calculation.  Suddenly it’s easy to remember why you found her threatening, why this situation is dangerous. She scrutinizes you for a long moment, her green eyes on yours too intrusive, too presumptively direct.  It makes you hunch, bristling.  Somewhere at the back of your brain, warning bells sound, some mental connection tries to light.  Green…?

“I don’t shoot people just because they’re scary,” she says finally.  “Do you mean trouble for the people here?”

“We don’t want to fight you for your territory, if that’s what you mean.”

“Not my territory—I just wander through from time to time.”  One eyebrow quirks and there’s that flash of something open and unguarded again, before her eyes go back to trying to pin you to a tree and pry you open.  “But I wouldn’t like to see any of the people around here hurt.  They’ve been good to us.”  

“Watch me swell up and bust from caring so hard.  We don’t want anything to do with any of you.  Happy?  Are we going to try to murder each other or will you  _ go away _ ?”

The human examines you a moment longer.  Then she blows out  a sigh,her musket butt tapping the ground as the tension slumps out of her.  “Wow, those options suck.”  Her tone is frank, her posture is tired, and you try not to notice how much less alien that makes her seem.  You try not to notice that with her weapon down she’s left herself vulnerable to attack, that you’re all but certain you could be across that distance and at her throat before she could recover.  

You must not be the only one who notices, because the black wolf stands and prowls toward her, moving in on her flank.  You rub your thumb restlessly over the hilt of your sickle and debate just breaking for it.  You just have no idea what direction you want to break.

“...I don’t suppose you’d want to talk?”  She doesn’t even back away from the wolf stalking in at her side and you’re half expecting blood and half wondering what it is your instincts are muttering that you’ve missed. “Just for a bit?”

You wish she’d stop looking at you with those too-green, human eyes.  Looking at you and talking to you, like you could be the same, like you’re not a possible enemy, or a stranger, or even some  non-caste, barely tolerated freak.  The tips of your ears twitch, trying to lie back in confusion.

Kankri, outwardly still, but inwardly a flurry of furious attention, tugs at your mind.   _ \--She smells *wrong.*--  _ he repeats.  The scent swirls through your brain, that alien human musk laced through with the smells of fur and den and familiarity.   _  --She smells like kin/wolves/us.  Why?-- _

Why…?  

Surmise blossoms in your brain as a dozen details you’d ignored come howling back for your attention.  All the velvet on your body stands up.   _  Green eyes _ .  You’d taken him for a widow-wolf, from the first, hadn’t you, strange and feral and alone as he was, and that sickly color not quite like a bond at all.  She’d _ spoken _ to him, he’d  _ recognized  _ her, it had all been right there in front of you and yet, and yet—surely it’s not possible—

The black wolf demon slinks up alongside the human. She sets her hand on his head, an idle intimacy. 

Your understanding of the situation snaps into an entirely different perspective, like an image inverting. 

“You—” you say, and fumble.  

She looks at you with surprise— _ surprise.    _ “Oh, I thought you—” She bites her lip.  “Haha.  Oops!  Um, well.  This is—this is Slick.  I found him when he was—a few years ago.  Littler.  And I’m Jade, I don’t think I said—wow, I’m doing this  _ way  _ wrong.”

You can’t take your eyes away from that clawless, human hand twining possessively into black fur, from the scrap of multicolored fabric bright like a slit throat behind it.

There is a  _ collar around his neck _ .

Kankri’s snarl starts low and almost inaudible.

“That... is disgusting,” you say, voice shaky.

The human’s hopeful expression snuffs out like a light.  She falls silent.

“That is  _ repulsive, _ ” you repeat, shock slowly transmuting into a molten tide of fury, your brother’s anger singing the cold, sharp smell of metal and blood into yours.   “You—what did you  _ do?  _  Where is his pack _ ,  _  where is his  _ troll-sibling, what did you do to him?” _

“I didn’t, I just found him, I just—”

“—Oh, what, like he just turned up magically in your pocket one day?  You just happened across a fucking wolf demon and you thought to yourself ‘oh, I know what I’ll do, I’ll just take him home and  _ keep him’?”  _

“It wasn’t  _ like _ that! He was alone, he—”

“—What do you think we are, your tame woolbeasts?  How dare you, how fucking dare you;  you think you can just—what?  Have us all for animals?  Make fucking  _ pets  _ out of us?”

“He’s _ not  _ a  _ pet! _ ”

_ “ _ Shut  _ up,  _ you terrors-taken taintchafing human _ witch!” _

She stares at you, face blanched and utterly empty, and then she’s making a lunge for the black wolf, catching him him around the neck with both arms, dragging her weight back to stop his silent, murderous leap for your throat.

He checks his momentum just barely, still straining toward you, lips peeled back, eyes gone solid, murderous green, glowing all through.  His snarl arrives only after the fact, a rising, venomous vibration, like he’d much rather kill you than warn you.  He’s got to be twice her weight.  She couldn’t hold him if he didn’t allow it, but he stays in her arms and hits you with his mind instead, the clearest, sharpest communication you’ve had from him all day:

_ \--MINE.-- _

The thought rolls through you like a thunderstorm.

It checks your own angry momentum.  Kankri’s growl snaps off, thoughts disassembling into confusion.

The wolf chooses the bondmate,  _ always _ .  And nobody questions that choice.  That’s ingrained, that’s unshakeable.  A truth that goes all the way back to empress and mother wolf; the first, undying dreamers.  But, but she’s a human.  She can’t form a bond, not a real one, not one that counts.  Can she?  It’s some human magic, a trick, a half-truth—

She’s hanging on around his neck and her face looks like you savaged her.  Blank like she doesn’t dare show wounds.  She might be holding him back or she might just be holding on.

Your outrage stumbles.  Kankri’s mental touch is a wordless, eddying fog in your mind, doubtful and unsettled.

You don’t… know.

She sucks in a breath and the missing emotion floods back into her face.

“No,  _ you  _ shut up.  You utter fuckface!  _  You weren’t there.  _  Where were you when he was in a cage? Where were you when he was all alone?  Don’t you tell me what I should have done like you know anything about it.  Don’t you tell me how I should have left him.  You don’t like my choices?  You don’t like me?  _ Fine _ , I don’t care.  You don’t get to decide _ who my family is.” _

Her voice gets angrier and angrier as she goes, picking up speed and temper.  Her fingers tighten in fur, on the stock of her musket.  The black wolf’s eyes blaze eery light.  The human’s eyes are the same ferocious green and you can’t tell if you’re imagining the hint of a glow licking up behind them.

“We don’t need you, we don’t want you.  We’re doing just fine on our own.”  

Every word feels driven straight into your chest.

“And if you think you can take us, you just  _ come and fucking try. _ ”

You stand there, breath knocked out of you, almost mesmerized, and wonder if this might not be some human magic after all.  You can’t look away from her, and you can feel those eyes from horntip to toes.

You have, you are beginning to suspect, royally fucked up.  Full-fledged Karkat Vantas ruining everything special.

You just can’t decide which particular reaction you should be berating yourself for.

In the face of your silence, in the absence of immediate challenge, the violence leaches slowly out of the air.  That dangerous green light recedes from the black wolf’s eyes until you can see gold at their center again.  Far from calm, but... present.  The human blows out her breath angrily,  flexes her fingers open and closed.

“Bluh, argh.”  Her voice still sounds unsteady.  She shakes out her dark hair like she could shake the unpleasant emotions away with it.  “Or we could…  _ not  _ do that. I think maybe you had the right idea in the first place.”  The words emerge tired, flat, all the secret edges filed away.  

You find yourself reaching automatically toward her mind, like you might with a packmate, trying to—what?  Read between the lines?  Establish common ground? ...Offer comfort or  apology?  If she were a troll you might manage it, even without a packbond, but she is not a troll.  You can’t find anything there and you can hardly touch more than the seething, surface emotions of the scar-eyed wolf.

She can’t quite clear the hostility from her eyes, milder cousin to the black wolf’s stare, but she trains them fixedly on some middle point past your shoulder.  “How ‘bout we go back to that.  You leave us be and we’ll return the favor.”

...She pulled her wolf-brother out of a rage without even a moirail to balance her.  True bond or not, that’s not a feat to be accomplished on superficial relationships.

“I’m sorry,” you blurt, and are utterly unsurprised when this fixes precisely nothing.

The human blinks twice.  Her glasses glint.  The set of her jaw remains angry, her face closed.  The black wolf pings your own conflicted thoughts back at you: - _ -((sorry /not)) _ \--

Your ears twitch, heating uncomfortably.

“You might want to head on your way in any case,” the human adds, more neutrally.  “There’s been livestock going missing in the area for weeks and people are getting trigger-happy.  I really do try not to shoot anyone sentient enough to be reasoned with.”

You can feel the fog of Kankri’s thoughts, coalescing into the disagreeable notion that he might have been  _ wrong _ .  It sits in your brain, a dark, lumpy clot of discomfort, impossible to ignore.

_ \--...what do we do?--   _ he asks, almost plaintive.

Your chest… feels strange.  Probably because you’re still doing stupid things with your lungs: i.e., forgetting to use them.  

You should leave.  Take her up on her offer and abscond while you can.  There’s nothing here you can change and you’re not sure you should.  They aren’t any version of you and Kankri.  You can’t make her less a human, you can’t make them less a disturbing anomaly.  It’s likely the kindest thing you could do is leave them be.  

You can’t make them less alone.  

\-- _ Let’s be dumb _ , _ \--  _ you say, and take a step forward.

The human’s attention snaps sharply to you.  The black wolf curls back his lip.

Moving in precise increments, you put your sickle away, hooking the rune-etched blade back into the leather strap at your waist.  You fight a case of nerves that are busy reminding you that that is A HUMAN, HUMAN, ANGRY HUMAN WITH A GUN and take another step.  Kankri falls in at your side, close enough to keep your joint approach from presenting as a threat.   You can’t stop your shoulders from hunching, your horns dropping low, every step wary and half poised to bolt.

She does not look friendly.

With every step you’re less certain of your receipt and yet more certain that this gesture worth carrying through.  Some confirmation, some fleeting moment of acknowledgment, you can manage that much, at least.

This would be easier if they didn’t both have you pinned under eerily similar eyes: guarded, suspicious. ...ready to bite. This would be easier if she weren’t so distinctly  _ human _ .

Well, you’ve already had one chunk taken out of you today.  Two’s hardly any worse.

Probably.

She  _ did _ say she wouldn’t shoot you.

Also probably.

You sidle a few steps closer, heart beating hard in your chest.  You still can’t read anything behind that bare, strangely vulnerable face, gone closed off and inscrutable. 

You turn your bandaged hand palm up.  Two pairs of eyes fix on it.  A flare of  acid amusement, hot pepper sharp in your nose, flickers from the black wolf.  The human tilts her head, looks back to you.

Her eyes are wide and very green, dangerous like tanglevines.

You extend your hand.

Voices cut through the trees and you jump about a foot in the air, jerking back, all your velvet bristling.

All four of you look south, toward the noise.  The voices call again, humans, distant, in a group.  More calls, breaking off to the southeast.  Something’s got them out in force.

You fall back a step, without thought.  Another.  Time to go.

“Wait!” the human says, breaking her silence.  

You hesitate.

Her face sets with decision and she speaks, all in a rush.  “Go too far that way and you’ll run right into the village wardstone circle.  You’re better to go long around to the west and follow the creek bed down into the valley to cut through the rocks.  No one will notice you there.”

“Oh, I. ...Thanks.” 

She catches you off guard with a brilliantly sunny smile.  “Don’t worry about it,” she says, and then mimics your gruff growl: “Now will you  _ go away _ ?”

You flash her your own teeth, mostly a smile.  “Same to you, furless.”  You rock on your feet and then daringly dart in to brush her fingertips with your own.  

Salt, iron.

You pull back almost as quickly, pulse adrenaline fast.  Her mouth shapes a surprised ‘O’.  You avert your eyes, horns prickling with heat.  Your fingertips tingle.

“Empress keep you, Jade, Slick.”   Even the names sound alien in your mouth, and you know the blessing for a lie.  There is no pack to bind them into something bigger, no queen or alpha to weave them back into the dream when they pass.  Does she even really understand what that means?  Her wolf-brother must.

She lets Kankri sniff her hand, too, and winds her fingers into Slick’s fur as the two wolves also trade brief greeting.  You attempt your own experimental hand offering. The black wolf contemplates you with a scarred gold eye, knowing and immovable, darkly amused, flank pressed firm against her side.  _ \--(mine)-- _

The human—Jade—has one eyebrow up.  Her lips purse in a friendlier version of that hot pepper amusement, framing blunt white teeth.  “Luck to you both,” she says, and adds practically: “Don’t get shot.”

You roll your eyes and head off at a lope.

The trees close around you, leaving you alone with your brother again.

In the distance you can hear the humans spreading out, calling back and forth about whatever they are about, making more and more ground unavailable to you.  You’ll have to swing  _ very _ wide out of your way to circle back to Sollux and Terezi unaccosted.  You think you’ve had about all the human accostment drama you would like for one day.  You’ll be glad to get well clear of here.  Rejoin the rest of your pack, find and claim some ground as far away from the forest shore and humans as you can manage.

And yet, somewhere at the back of your brain you find yourself plotting, practicing excuses you might use to come back here.  Just for a bit.

You know you’re in trouble when Kankri doesn’t tell you what a terrible idea that is.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lupercalia update! :3 Thanks again to skates for beta.

The voices of the townsfolk still call in the distance, sounding indistinctly back and forth through the shallows of the woods in several directions as you pick your way back to where you left your hunting site.  “Can you tell what they’re saying?” you ask Slick, where he pads beside you, a rangy black shape.   

He sends you a fuzzy tangle of scents and colors--more a confused burst of sensory input than any kind of words.  But you have a lot of practice picking apart Slick’s way of communicating.  Right now, the answer is something like --(

_ no//don’t care.)-- _

You tug the thick fur of his ruff, near his bandana.  “Wow, thanks.”

Slick slants one lupine eye up your way, a glint of gold in black.  He taps his tail very briefly, and the peppery mental flare of his amusement makes your nose itch in sympathy.  You roll your eyes at his tail as he lopes off ahead, vanishing deeper into the forest.

Vanishing to your eyes, anyway.  He’s always right there in your head, the familiar, alien pressure of his mind a comforting constant, like a low-level static charge.

You couldn’t feel that other wolf-demon or his troll at all.

Is that normal?  Maybe that’s normal.  You wish you’d thought to ask.  Damn it, you have so many  _ questions,  _ and you finally get someone who might be able to answer them in front of you and you hardly get any of them answered at all.

You picture the pair as you first stumbled onto them, shy and wild, demon-gold eyes so like Slick’s, wary upon you, the black that gold was set in just beginning to spark with some other color.  Slick’s eyes glow like bottled swamp gas when he’s upset, green and furious.  So maybe that’s a species emotional signal of some sort?  Social communication, like a blush or a frown.  And not just for the wolves--you’d seen that troll’s eyes flicker, too.

Blowing a stray hair out of your eyes and adjusting your gun, you try for positivity rather than either wistfulness or rabid, unsatisfied curiosity.  At least they had decided not to hate you in the end! You think.  And if you ever run into another troll or wolf-demon you will know much better how to start and what inter-cultural pitfalls to avoid!

Or maybe all the rest of them will want to take Slick away from you, too.

Nope, positive!

Think about how  _ interesting _ that troll-demon was! With his wolf-eyes and his orange horns and his black floof of hair.  And those cute little point-tips to his ears with just the hint of fluff.  You’re just sad he didn’t have a tail.  In the stories, trolls have tails, like their wolves.

Oh, oh! Or  _ proper _ wolf ears.  His had been much more human than you’d think, for all their points and the way they twitched about with his thoughts.

His face was surprisingly human, too--something a bit alien in the lines and the way his face sloped into his nose, but not at all like you’ve heard.  Well--you suppose he’d have had to be a bloodthirsty, slavering monster to  _ really  _ live up to some of the stories about trolls and their hellhounds, but you still hadn’t expected him to look quite so… ordinary in his extraordinariness.  

Approachable, maybe.  

Angry eyes gone vulnerable-uncertain in that all-too-human face; saw-edged teeth caught in dark, almost human lips; frown just fading into puzzlement.  Soft, all over grey velvet, pale against the dark of his hair, against the curve of his claws.

The pads of his fingers had been black and furless, startlingly warm when he touched you.

You catch up to Slick at your campsite.  He’s lounging beneath a tree, near your bedroll and camouflaged blind.  “Don’t go rolling all over my campsite.  If you get your scent everywhere nothing will come near and I’ll have to find another spot to stake out,” you tell him, as you make your way down the slope.  You might have to anyway--you haven’t had a scrap of luck catching the erstwhile sheep-thieves here.  

You’re nearly certain you’re looking at a wasp-demon attack--they’ve been unusually common enough in the area some of them might have hived up and started taking larger prey--but you haven’t been able to track any of them far enough to turn up a nest.  You’re still hoping you can find the right place to properly stake out their flight paths, but that might take nights yet.

Slick’s thought tangle is dismissive: the dusty smell of long-dried bones, the rumble of empty stomachs, boredom.

“Nothing to hunt doesn’t mean we’re not still  _ hunting _ ,” you say marching up to him--and then  _ eep _ and stumble backwards as something drops from the trees into directly into your path.

“ _ There _ you are,” Dave says, brushing leaf litter from his palms as he rises from his landing crouch.

“There  _ you  _ are,” you say back to him, when you have decided not to have a heart attack.

_ \--(The tasty bird-fluff is here,)--  _ Slick indicates to you, mildly, in a sensory jumble that is nevertheless inescapably smug.  You can just  _ smell _ the amusement rising off his thoughts like bright burnt metal.  

You can’t help but start laughing.   _ \--You’re an ass,--  _ you tell him, adding to Dave, “You scared the bejeepers out of me, geez.”

Dave looks briefly bewildered--and then his jaw sets in that flinchy, unhappy angle he gets when he realizes he’s done something a little too far outside human norms.  Something like drop out of a tree faster than his hunter-girlfriend can react.  Oops.  You pull him into a tight hug before he can think too hard.  

“How’re you feeling?  Better?  You look better.”

Dave raises his eyebrow at you from where you’re holding him at arm’s length for inspection.  “Yeah, it’s usually hard to top my extreme attractiveness, but luckily ‘poisoned by a fucking demon-scorp’ gives me a long way up to go.”  He lifts his cloth-wrapped right arm in demonstration.  “Last of the swelling went down last night.  Still itches like the devil’s own wooly underwear in a sandpit, but I guess this demon-touched feathery shit’s gotta be good for something.  These bandages are now officially 100% aesthetic only.”  He strikes a pose, arm swaddled dramatically to his chest, butt pooched out.  “Just some fine-ass Strider styles of the medi-fashion variety so the locals don’t wonder why I’m such a quick-healing hottie.  No big.”

Pfft.  You lean up to drop a kiss on the tip of his nose and grin when he goes pink.  “You’re a cutiepie all right.  You bring me breakfast?”

“Breakfast and news.”  Behind his shades, Dave’s face is unusually serious.

“The townsfolk?  I heard them out calling.”

“Eat first,” Dave says, and presses a paper wrapped packet into your hands.  You recognize the tavernkeeper’s baking.

“It’s that bad?”

“You just might not want to stop to eat after.”  He nudges the packet in your hands again until you finally settle against Slick, swinging your gun to one side but still in reach, and set about unwrapping your meal.  Dave makes a face at Slick and doesn’t join you on the ground.  He hovers over you instead, pacing and tapping his fingers and generally doing his best impression of a fluttery mother hen.  You stare him down over your meat pie, and then wiggle your eyebrows and grin at him as you take a very pointed bite.

That earns you a flash of a smile.  “Marni sends her best with the pies, by the way,” Dave says, finally dropping to squat opposite you. “She says I’m ‘not to let that nice hunter girl get away from me.’”

“Marni is very correct,” you say around a bite of food, and then pause to grin at him.  “Besides, you’d have to shake me off your trail first.”

“D’awww,” Dave says deadpan, like he’s joking, even though you can tell he really isn’t.  He produces another wax-paper packet from his pack, unwrapping it for Slick.  “Here, fur-face, a horrible pile of body parts from the butcher’s scrap bucket. Yum yum.”

Slick snaps at his retreating hand without any particular intent, his mind humming lazy pleasure and amusement.

“You boys play nice.”

“I’m always nice,” Dave says, tilting his head to flutter his eyelashes at you over the top of his shades.  When he thinks you’re not looking, he sticks his tongue out at Slick.  

You snicker and nearly inhale a chunk of onion.  When you’re done choking and otherwise reaffirming with your body which items go down which pipes, you lick gravy from your fingers and look up at Dave, one eyebrow raised.  “Okay, I’m eating.  What’s up?”

He sighs out a long breath.  Fiddles with the dirt by his feet.  “Bro says we need to get out of town.”

Oh. “Another of his notes?”

“On the pillow this morning,” Dave agrees.  “I swear to fuck I closed the window; I don’t know how he got a bird in.  You think their little feet could work a latch?”

“I’d be more concerned with how a bird could move a window twenty times its weight.”

“Maybe you’d need twenty birds,” Dave says.  “Shit.  Now I’m picturing, like, stalker bird conga lines outside my window while I sleep.  I’m never gonna close my eyes again.”

“Ha.”  Your meat pie seems a lot less delicious than it did a few minutes ago.  You make yourself keep eating anyway.  “I guess he didn’t say  _ why _ we needed to leave.”

Dave shrugs, working his shoulders like the baby-fine feathers hiding along his spine need help to settle.  That’s a sure sign he’s more unhappy than he’s letting on. But then, Dave always blames himself for these things.  Dave’s a big dummy.  “You know Bro.  Dude loves his cryptic messages.  It’s like, ‘I can monitor my baby bro all across hundreds of miles of countryside to know when there’s trouble coming his way, and I can painstakingly bird-courier a note across said hundreds of miles to let him know he ought to skip town, but do I have the time to jot down the five extra words that would tell him what the hell is going on?  No.  No I do not.’”

“Well!”  If it’s not all the way to cheerful, you at least manage brisk and firm.  But really, it’s not like this is  _ bad  _ news.  “We would have been moving along soon anyway.  I’d’ve preferred to track down the wasps or whatever’s been picking off the livestock first, but it’s not much sooner than what we were thinking.”  It’s a nice town.  The people here always seem happy to have a hunter visit, and remarkably tolerant of your group’s little collection of eccentricities--but there’s no point pressing your luck.  

Slick mutters a low tangle of anger and dissatisfaction and dismissal into your mind.  That makes you smile.  Slick is not a people person.

Spirits strangely brightened by his misanthropy, you shake the last crumbs of pie crust into your mouth, and gather up your and Slick’s wrappers, folding them neatly before passing them back to Slick.  He stretches, gets to his feet, and trots a little ways away to bury the trash in the dirt with a few negligent flicks of his paws.

Padding back your way, he wanders over to go snuff at Dave’s hair.  For his part, Dave pretends not to notice the giant black wolf invading his personal space.  You hide a smile as the pretend nonchalance turns into pretend-not-to-be-having-a-stealthy-shoving-match.  They do enjoy one-upping each other.  “Those hunters a few towns over are supposed to be heading this way any day now, aren’t they?” you ask.  “They could handle a wasp nest, or whatever else this is.”

“Runner said they might even make it in later this morning or afternoon.”  Dave’s looking tense again.   

You inspect him through the broad lenses of your glasses.  “Anyone we know?”

“Not that I heard.”

“You think that’s what your bro was warning us about?  These hunters?”  

Hunters are… well it’s hit or miss whether they’ll be substantially  _ more  _ tolerant of Dave and his demon-touched gifts, or  _ less _ .  You both try not to bring Slick into the question at all.  Everybody knows you have some kind of high-content hybrid animal and you leave it at that. (Wow, though, the idea of wolf-demons breeding with actual wolves.  Ew?  You are  _ pretty  _ sure they would not be down for that.  They’re not some near-animal lesser demons--Slick’s as much a person as you or Dave.)  So, whatever.  _ Let _ folks think you keep your “dog” mostly out of towns and out-of-sight because you don’t quite trust him with strangers.  It’s not like that’s a  _ lie _ .

Dave shrugs a response to your question, frowning at his fingers where they lightly brace his perch in the dirt; picking absently at the hint of scales on his unwrapped wrist.  He doesn’t even seem to notice when Slick sets his teeth testingly in his shoulder--not until the bite grows hard enough for him to turn and swat reflexively at the wolf.  “Ow, lay off already, you overgrown dustbunny!”

Slick releases him without appearing to pay any mind to the batting hands.  His mind buzzes a staticky cloud of irritation.  -- _(Distracted,)--_ he pronounces.  He prowls over to sit next to you, eyeing Dave with a look you think might not be dissimilar to the intensifying scrutiny in your own green eyes.

“Daaaaave,” you say.  “I can see you thinking.  Tell me.”

“Nah, it’s nothing really,” Dave says, sounding entirely like it’s something.  “I’m just thinking--we really oughta clear out of here, shouldn’t we?”

Your lips purse further.  “Yeah, probably we should.  But there’s something else, isn’t there?  Something you’re not telling me.”   You narrow your eyes behind your glasses.  “Those townspeople didn’t get all riled up and go running around in the woods without a very good reason.  That’s not safe.  What happened?”

“I’m not saying we should stay…” Dave starts, reluctantly.

“Dave Strider.  I am about five ‘dot dot dots’ from dying of impatience over here, mister.  Just tell me already!”

His words come all in a rush.  “Shia Keeper’s youngest didn’t turn up for breakfast this morning.”

You blink.  You sit back heavily on your tush.  

Now that Dave’s started, he doesn’t seem to want to stop.  “It’s still too soon to tell, but they think he might have gone out to see the sheep.  He’d been talking about them, I guess.  Knew the adults were worried.  There’s no sign of a struggle or an attack anywhere--some kicked up leaves, maybe, in the pasture near the shallows, but who knows what that means.  None of the dogs picked up any trail.”

You blow out a long breath, thread your fingers into Slick’s fur beside you.  He’s an anchor, his mind a little more alert and interested, but otherwise unmoved.  “Outside the village ward circle?”

“Yeah,” Dave says.

Your fingers tighten further.  “Same details as the missing lambs.”

“Yeah,” Dave says again, and doesn’t say anything else.

“If it’s a wasp-demon nest he might still be alive.”  For a while.  Weeks even.  They like to paralyze prey to keep for their hatchlings.  You pet Slick’s fur, focusing on the texture of it.  “Her youngest,” you say after a little while, trying to sort faces in your head.  Maybe it will distract you from the sick churning in your gut.  “That would be… Odain?”

“Ossi.  He’s six.”

Nope, your gut is definitely still churning.  “Fuck,” you say, with feeling, and stop trying to pretend like you’re not upset.  Slick lays his head on your leg, fixes you with his cold golden eyes--not like he’s sympathizing, but still like he doesn’t want you to be distressed.  Maybe it’s not nice of you, but you’re  _ grateful  _ for that crisp, clear wind of pragmatic disinterest that is Slick’s thoughts.  Sometimes, maybe, you  _ need _ a little ruthless selfishness to deal.  

...Sometimes, it would be nice not to care.

You give yourself just a very few minutes to regroup, pull yourself back into working order.  Life’s massively stupidly unfair sometimes, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to keep going.  Look at this situation head on.  Problem solve.  “All right,” you say with a little of that borrowed briskness.  “So he’s either dead or he’s stuck somewhere we can’t find.  Only one of those options is time sensitive.”

Dave nods, does that uncomfortable shoulder-shrug/feather-settling motion again.  “He still might just be wandered off somewhere,” he adds.  “It’s only been a few hours.  Kids do dumb shit.  Not like there’s any evidence something actually snatched him.”

“Could be.”  You don’t really believe it.  Dave doesn’t either.  You’ve both been out on the roads long enough to have a good idea both how nice  _ and _ how not-nice the world can be.  “Either way, if he’s anywhere a little kid or normal predator or even a  lesser demon could have gotten to, the townsfolk’s search parties will turn him up.”

“That just leaves mids and up as the possible nasties they can’t deal with,” Dave says.

“Like the wasps.  And there’s more hunters due in town any minute.”  

The pair of you share a look, trying to convince each other and mostly failing.  Dave’s Bro’s warnings are sometimes cryptic, but they’ve never led you wrong.  You should let these other hunters handle the situation.  You should, but...

Your mind snags on another factor you hadn’t considered.  “ _ Oh _ .”  Angry alien face under a dark tangle of hair, watchful eyes, fur and teeth.  ...Demons.  “Um.  So.  Dave!  Did I mention Slick and I had an interesting encounter this morning?”

He must be a  little too familiar with that chirp in your voice, because Dave’s mouth goes instantly flat with suspicion.

“We, um.  Met another wolf-demon and his troll.  Actually, I think it went pretty well!”

Dave’s bland expression doesn’t twitch, but there’s a subtle movement along his scalp like a wind ruffling through.

“I mean, except for when Slick bit them, or when they got all snarly about me being with Slick, or when we kind of sort of may have lost our tempers a little bit.”

“ _ Jade. _ ”  Dave’s orange-blond hair still rises almost invisibly, fluffed by the feathers underneath. 

“But it all worked out and nobody shot anybody and I think they probably even didn’t want to fight us anymore in the end!”

“Oh, god.”  Dave still sounds completely calm.  Also kind of low-key dramatic, but if he wasn’t he wouldn’t be Dave.  He presses his hands to his temples like he is trying to hold his head together.  “Jade.  Why.”

“It seemed like a good idea at the time?”  

In your head, Slick is snickering evilly at both of you.  He lifts his head from your knee to gape his jaw in a toothy doggy grin.   “Slick started it,” you add, tossing him ruthlessly to Dave’s disapproval.  Slick internally rolls his eyes at you, a very human cloud of thought.  Dave is not distracted.

“Holy shit,” he mutters.  “It’s like I can’t leave you alone for even five minutes or you’ll be out petting the bugbears and trying to ride the dryads.  Must you constantly attempt to befriend the big scary monsters that want to eat you?”

“ _ Hey _ ,” you say, a flash of anger actually licking through your veins.  

“Present company excepted, of course,”  Dave corrects easily.  “Slick being a big scary monster that does not want to eat you.”

You purse your lips at him, but your anger’s already gone.  Slick’s not offended and you know Dave really doesn’t mean it. Also it’s a little bit accurate.  “ _ They _ didn’t want to eat me either,” you say repressively.  “Honestly, Dave, it’s not like being a demon automatically determines your personality.  They were just curious and shy and…” --that last moment, when you were all hollowed out and heartsore, and the troll had crept towards you, brows furrowed, hand outstretched-- “...kind of protective towards Slick.”

Dave sighs and bounces to his feet, standing to pace back and forth in front of you.  You draw your knees up to your chest and watch him. You do not point out that his steps have gone just a little too fluid--a series of rapid, focused movements like--well, like a long-legged bird stalking along the ground.  He scrubs his hands through his unsettled hair.

Finally, he paces out his thoughts.

With another sigh, Dave drops down beside you all at once.  He doesn’t even react when Slick lazily flashes his teeth just on principle, and then flops partway onto your lap.

“You okay?”  Dave asks you, voice quiet now.

You smile a bit, stroking Slick’s ear.  “I’m good.”

“You said you lost your temper.”

There is absolutely no judgment in his voice, just a careful, abiding concern.  Dave would throw himself on knives for you, and he’s never liked that there are some injuries he can’t take.  That’s all right.  You decided years and years ago that you’re  _ not _ letting anything happen to Dave.  You’ve never forgotten  _ that,  _ no matter how crazy things get.  Anything else that goes wrong is just noise, stuff you can fix later.

“Almost,” you confess.  You sigh and lean into him, settling your head into the curve of his neck and shoulder.  He smells like the trees he’s been travelling through and a little--you try not to let Slick’s thoughts color yours too much, but it can’t be denied--like something feathered and edible.  It’s nice, in a way that makes you want to burrow into him harder.

“We’re fine,” you tell him, and mean it.  “Slick  _ and  _ me.”

Dave huffs a breath that might be amusement or agreement or aggravation and turns his head in and down towards yours, face nuzzling automatically into your hair.  His hand around your shoulders starts preening out the ends of the locks, where it always tangles, a faint, pleasant tug against your scalp.  It’s familiar, reflexive kind of gesture, and you know it’s as much to comfort himself as you.  

You think it’s  _ super  _ cute when Dave does his bird-cuddle thing, but that is another point that you know he would prefer not to be reminded about.  Oh, well.  You’ll just have to remember it for him.  One of your arms is looped partway around Slick’s muzzle and neck in your lap, but you sneak your free hand out to pet at Dave’s shirt, straightening the collar, smoothing out the creases in it and the way it lies under the straps for his pack and katana.  Preening back.  You hum a little satisfied noise as he melts against you.  

“Was touch and go for a bit,” you tell him, “but we worked it out fine.  And they really didn’t mean it, Dave.  They were trying to look out for Slick.  They backed right off when they saw they’d upset us.”

“Hmf.  More like they backed off when they saw what a fuckin’ awesome badass you were,” Dave mumbles into your hair, fond and amused.  “Nobody fucks with Harls and the Slick-meister.”

“Or you.”

“Damn straight,” he agrees.  “No fucking all around.  Between the three of us we’ve got the damn monopoly on unfuckability.”  You snort gracelessly and Dave huffs into your hair.  “That came out wrong.”

You can hear him smiling.

You snuggle further into his neck and nip lightly.  “Maybe a little fucking?”

His skin heats against your lips, but his voice remains deadpan.  “Gasp.  Madame, you offend my virtue.  My little heart, it is all a flutter.  To think that you would suggest such liberties with me, a delicate maiden--”

You’re outright laughing now, elbowing Dave in the stomach and curling over so your glasses go askew.  Slick makes an irritable noise where you’re bouncing his head in your lap.   _ \--If you don’t like it, move,--  _ you tell him, pulling a mental face at him, still giggling.  

Slick just hunkers down intractably.   _ \--(No. Mine.)-- _

Ah-haha, these boys.  

“Jade,” Dave says, sobering up some.  His fingers still fiddle with your hair.  “I gotta ask.”

Oh, that does not sound promising.

“We’ve got a missing kid and some coincidental demons in the area…”  His words make your draw yourself up without even meaning to.  Dave’s arm tightens, holding you close.  “I’m not saying they did it!  I’m not saying anything.  Hell if I know, I never even met the dudes.  I am not the demon-whisperer, here.  My troll-demon knowledge file is sitting at a big oh oh, and my wolf-demon file is only one tick better.  Though extensive.  I just… gotta ask.”

You blow out your breath.  Roll back your head on his shoulder and frown up at the canopy and make yourself give the topic proper consideration.  It is, you know, a  _ very  _ fair question.  You’re not sure why just the suggestion of it bothers you so much.  You thread your fingers through dark black fur, mentally leaning in to the still mildly bored hum of Slick’s mind.  

Maybe it bothers you because it could so easily be asked about you and Slick.  (About you and Bec.)  

But Dave’s right.  You  _ don’t  _ really know them.  They might not be monsters, but they’re also not Slick.  “I got the impression they were trying to stay  _ away  _ from humans.  They said they were just passing through,” you say slowly, thinking aloud.  “With their pack, looking for territory.”

“There’s been sheep going missing for weeks,” Dave says.

“I think he was telling the truth when he said they hadn’t been in the area very long, but I can’t say for  _ certain _ ,” you confess.  “Still.  I could see the lambs, maybe. Heck,  _ we’d  _ probably poach a lamb if we were hungry enough and we couldn’t find any game.  But a kid?”

“It’s not a troll kid, though,” Dave points out, voice still mild, neutral; fingers soothing along your shoulder.  “Would they see a difference between a sheep and a human?”

Your first thought is  _ of course _ , but your second thought is  _ maybe _ .  That troll had spoken to you, snarked and bantered and asked questions of you… but he’d also clearly seen you as something automatically other, something different and potentially dangerous.  Something that couldn’t be trusted with Slick.

Would they think like a human about this topic?

You run the velvet of Slick’s ear through your fingers over and over again.  He’s watching you, golden eye tilted upward from your lap, as aware of your busy, uncomfortable thoughts as you are of the current serene simplicity of his own.

“What do you think?” you ask him, forming the words as mental question simultaneously.  It always takes a little extra effort to be sure complicated ideas get across clearly.  But Slick and you have been making your strange, static-y psychic connection work for years.  “Do you think a wolf-demon would eat a person?  A human kid?”

Slick blinks lazily at you.  His response is a tangled haze of disdainful negation. Not so much a ‘no’ as a general disapproval of the concept.   _ \--(Why/stupid/pointless).--   _ You get another cloud of thoughts and pictures and smells.  Some of them remind you very much of his psychic name-- of the smell of death, of the slipperiness of blood under paw, of the cold, and the dark.  Slick doesn’t remember exactly what happened to his pack for you to find him young, alone, a chained captive in a human merchant’s caravan.  But he doesn’t  _ not  _ remember, either.  

“He says you never meddle with the pups if you’re going to leave the parents alive,” you translate for Dave.  

“Charming,” Dave says, but the snark sounds mostly pro forma.  Dave has the same idea of what lies in Slick’s past as you.  Fighting is just how he and Slick bond.

“It’s a good point, though.  It would be a dumb thing for them to do.  They weren’t dumb, Dave.”

“And this conversation just continues to be a source of great comfort and reassurance to me.  The possibly hostile, possibly human-phobic, possibly mad-at-you pack of troll and wolf demons are not dumb.  Excellent.  How much of a powder keg do you think this situation will become if the townsfolk figure  _ out  _ that there’s a pack of high level demons passing through the area?”

Your stomach rolls uneasily.  

_ \--(Much,)--  _ Slick thinks with the first interest he’s shown in the conversation.

You hope, again, that your advice got those two safely out of the path of the human searchers.  Surely you’d have heard something by now if it hadn’t.  Wouldn’t you? “With any luck they’re long gone and it will never come up.”

“Bite your tongue,” Dave mutters.

You both fall silent, contemplating the current predicament and all the many ways this situation could spiral into a less-than-happy ending.  Well, you and Dave contemplate.  Slick seems content to doze peacefully on your knee.

“So,” Dave says after a while.  “That’s the thing.”

“That’s the thing,” you agree.

“We still need to leave,” he says.

“We really, really do.”

“We’re not going to, are we?”

You look up, and meet the reflection of your gaze in Dave’s shades.  It looks steely and determined.  His face has the slightest hint of a smile on it, like now that you’re both acknowledging the dumb thing you’re going to do, he already feels better.

You quirk a grin back at him.  “Nope, sure aren’t.”

“I’ll head up through the trees and scout around, see if I can spot anything,” Dave says.

“I’ll take Slick and see if we can pick up a scent trail somewhere.  Though with half the town out in the woods...”

“Thought you might say that.”  Dave pats his pack.  “Brought you two one more present.  Stopped by the Keepers’ place on the way out of town.  Special delivery, one wax-wrapped bundle of dirty nightclothes, full of stank.”

“Dave!  You always know just what I like.”

Slick has tuned fully in to the conversation, head picked up, ears alert.  His mind hums and pulses with anticipatory energy.  He might not care about the missing kid, but he does love a good hunt.

You give him anticipation and determination right back.  It’s a much, much better emotion than sitting here feeling distressed and helpless and sad about everything.  “If we can’t pick up the kid’s trail we’ll go back to staking out flight paths for the wasps.”

“Yeah, well whatever you do stay clear of the search parties,” Dave says. “Or at least make sure Slick keeps that bandana super apparent.” He reaches out to flick at the patchwork of brightly colored cloth tied around Slick’s neck, retrieving his hand before Slick can take a piece out of it. “People are twitchy as hell.  Don’t need either of you getting shot.”

“Oh?”  You turn around, sitting up on your knees to look him straight in the sunglasses.  “And what about you mister?”

“I’ll be careful,” Dave promises.

You raise a wry eyebrow at him.  “You’ll be flitting around in the trees making a target of yourself.”

“I’ll be a  _ careful _ target,” Dave insists. 

“Uh huh,” you say.  You eye him thoughtfully. “Maybe I should put a collar on  _ you _ .”

Dave’s pokerface is even cuter when his ears turn pink.  “Promises, promises.”

“Dave.”  You place a hand on his chest, resting over the scar you know is there, under the fabric, right over his heart.  The one that reminds you exactly how lucky you are to have this.  The one that reminds you that you’re never going to let go, and you’ll fight anyone who says different.

Dave’s  _ yours _ .  

(And you’re maybe still riding a little too close to Slick’s thoughts with his anticipation for the hunt, with his  _ mine, mine, mine _ , that he drove like blades at that other wolf and his troll, but hey you can defensive-possessive him right back.  They’re  _ both _ yours.)

You close your fingers in Dave’s shirt, pull him in, and kiss him like you want to eat him so he’ll be safe.  He hums and leans into you like he’d let you.

Slick’s head butts between you.  He doesn’t nip Dave, so he must be in a  _ really _ good mood.  

You send him a wave of utter annoyance.

He sends you nothing but impatient anticipation back--the crisp smell of wind rustling the trees, of a lightning storm building in the air.  The scrabble of prey fleeing for their life.  Slick’s front feet pat the ground and his golden eyes stare at you unblinkingly.   _ \--(Go/now/hunt.)-- _

“Nobody asked you,” Dave mutters, apparently entirely willing to hold a conversation he can only hear one side of.

You sigh.  Right.  Things to do.  And all of them life-or-death important.  You can’t quite make your hand release Dave’s shirt yet, but you lean back on your heels.  “We should go.”

“Yeah.”

“Be careful?”

“The carefulest.”

“Meet you for dinner?”

Dave curls his hand over yours on his chest, leans back in, smile hiding on his lips.  “If I don’t, you’ll come hunt me down.  Right?”

You smile and press your forehead against his.  “Always.”  

He smiles back, for real.

You let him go.

You turn to Slick.  And you go hunting.

**Author's Note:**

> \--  
> p.s. This series updates in its own time, which is Very Slowly. For now, please enjoy some of the side stories that follow in the series tag. Thanks for reading!


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